The soul struggles of Scott Brenton, who was reared in Calvinistic theology, became an Episcopal clergyman, and, as a last resort, a professor of chemistry, constitute the matter of "The Brentons" by Anna Chapin Ray. A foil to purely intellectual crises and tragedies, is the career arrested in mid-course by a disabling accident, of Reed Opdyke, Brenton's college friend. The quicksands and quagmires of scientific doubt are offset by the sturdy optimism of one for whom physical life seems to hold nothing. As a fine analysis of mental processes, the book is admirable. Life in a typical college town is portrayed with a careful and painstaking attention to detail, which makes for realism. One might object that the author's theological views and obvious dislikes are given a trifle too great prominence, but the spirit of the book is not didactic. Like others of Miss Ray's books, this is characterized by sincerity and conscientiousness, as well as finished workmanship. Little, Brown and Company.

Mr. A. H. Simons' "Social Forces in American History" is a rapid survey of the progress of affairs in this country from the colonial days to the present time, written from a somewhat unusual point of view. The writer is less concerned with events than with what he regards as the causes back of events. The key-note of his book is expressed in the opening sentence of his preface: "That political struggles are based upon economic interests." His aim is to trace the various interests that have struggled in each social stage, and the influence exercised by them in the creation of social institutions. From this point of view American history becomes practically a succession of class wars, culminating in a triumph of capitalism, but with events now trending toward a triumph of labor, and a system of common ownership by

Miss Maria Thompson Daviess has chosen a maiden made by nature to be a lady of her own, as the heroine of her "Rose of Old Harpeth," and has surrounded her with a circle of companions peculiarly adapted to set off her beauty and grace by their own quaint goodness, and thus has made a story which, without solving any Problem, or teaching any Lesson, or otherwise gratifying those desirous of finding a pill in every sugar plum of fiction, will amuse the simple-minded in search of quiet pleasure. "Rose," otherwise Rose Mary Alloway, combines the functions of guiding-star and mainspring to her little home group; her pious, gently mystical old uncle; her rigidly conscientious Aunt Lavinia, her shrewd, gentle Aunt Amandy; Stonie Jackson, heir of the unworthy cousin beloved in her first youth, and a varied company of domestic animals. Into this circle enters an invalid seeking rest and strength, and, when guided towards them by the capable hands of Rose and her uncle, eagerly desirous of rewarding his benefactors. Miss Daviess tells her story prettily and gracefully, and its success will be a pleasant sign of a demand for wholesome reading. The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The celebration of the 300th anniversary of the discovery of Lake Champlain, in which the states of New York and Vermont joined officially in July, 1909, and in which the governments of the United States, Great Britain, France and Canada participated, is the subject of an impressive Report,

which the state of New York has published in a volume of more than five hundred octavo pages. The Report is prepared by the Hon. Henry Wayland Hill, secretary of the Commission, who was actively identified with the celebration from the first shaping of the plans in 1906 to the making of the last address and the booming of the last gun in July 1909. No detail is wanting. The history of the movement which prompted the celebration is sketched, the successive measures of legislation and organization are outlined, all of the addresses and poems are given in full, and the military and naval parades and reviews and the Indian play and pageant are picturesquely described. An appendix presents a number of historical papers, and gives the libretto of the Indian play "Hiawatha," the presentation of which by a group of Indian players was one of the features of the occasion. Scattered through the book are eighty or more full-page illustrations.

Alto

gether, this is a worthy record of a very interesting historical commemoration.

Its

concerning whom one wants to know in the wide range of English public, social and literary life,-authors, scholars, statesmen, ecclesiastics, and men and women prominent in social life and in all manner of pursuits. scope is by no means limited, as is quite commonly supposed, to residents within the British empire; but it includes persons of distinction in other countries. Americans, in particular, who turn over its pages, will be interested to notice how many of their own countrymen and country women,authors, professors, editors, and persons active in affairs and in public life are included. Among all the names, those identified with literature are by no means the least interesting. Browsing through these pages, one learns that Alfred Noyes is not yet quite 32 years old; that Arnold Bennett's full name is "Enoch Arnold Bennett" and that he registers himself as having "no recreations": that the indefatigable and always diverting Chesterton has already published nineteen books,-and

so on.

"The Statesman's Year-Book" for 1911 (Macmillan Co.) is the forty-eighth annual issue, and makes a substantial volume of more than 1,400 pages. Perhaps nowhere, within equal space, can be found more information of the sort which the average person wants, or more answers to questions which the average person is likely to ask; and everything is brought painstakingly down to date. Readers who do not follow the Year-Book from year to year may not be aware how much its scope has been broadened of late years. Formerly, for example, the United States was given its place alphabetically among the countries of America, and occupied a scant thirty pages. Now the United States constitutes an entire section by itself, second only, in position and space, to that filled by

the British Empire; and fills more than 200 pages. In addition to the general information regarding the national constitution and government, area and population, the churches and schools, the administration of justice, the army and navy, the railroads and shipping, the commerce and industry, etc., a separate sub-section is devoted to each state and territory, in which similar information is given. Any one who wishes to know who is at present the governor of any state, how the legislature is constituted, what are the conditions of the suffrage, what is the area and population, what are the provisions made for education, what are the annual receipts and expenditures of the government, what is the relative strength of the different churches, and what are the chief products and industries will find here what he seeks. The statistics are those of the 1910 census. For Great Britain and Ireland, the statistics are those of the 1911 census. For all the states of the world, similar information is given, if not with equal fulness, with equal care and accuracy. The maps in this volume show the new projected railway routes to India, railways, navigable waters and steamship routes, the new Liberian boundary, the northern territory of Australia, and the Panama Canal, from the latest reports of the Isthmian Canal Commission.

Thoughtful men have always tried to find in the history of Rome a kind of guidebook of human experience; the purpose of "The Religious Life of Ancient Rome" by Jesse Benedict Carter, Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Rome, is to show how Rome's religious history is typical of all religious evolution. The book treats of Roman civilization from the earliest times to the establishment of

the Holy Roman Empire in the 6th century. Rome first had purely physical concepts of gods, found among all primitive peoples; this conception was broadened and given the idea of patriotism by the Etruscans. The state religion which developed between 500 and 200 B.C. was modified by the myth and superstition of the Greek colonies in the south. Then came an essentially political age when religion as the tool of warring demagogues utterly lost dignity. Skepticism followed, but with the individual thinking that skepticism implies, came individualism in religion. The change in religion from a social instinct to a personal matter was slow. With it rose the two solutions of the problem of salvation: the Greek salvation by knowledge, and the Oriental salvation by faith. When Christianity was established by Constantine, faith triumphed, but there was a reactionary triumph of mysticism under Julian. St. Augustine, Benedict, and Gregory the Great had distinct places in putting the new Roman religion, Christianity, on the old patriotic basis. and so welding Rome and Catholicism. So are chronicled in Rome's history a series of instincts-physical, patriotic, superstitious, individualistic-not peculiar to Rome but common to religious life of all time. And in Rome, as presumably in all history, there was a permanent religion and a permanent religious supply. This book gives life and breadth and meaning to one's conception of Rome and shows philosophical insight into facts as well as scholarly knowledge on the part of the author. All history has to be interpreted-but not perverted-in the light of some idea. Such an interpretation is thoroughly presented in "The Religious Life of Ancient Rome." Houghton Mifflin Co.

COURAGE. She has no need of sword or spear, She shelters in no guarded place, She watches danger drawing near, And fronts it with a smiling face.

Not hers the dull, unseeing eye,

Blind fury, and the lust of blood,
Across her soul no tempests fly,
No passions surge in angry flood.

But clear as that great dome above Which frames the sun and hides the star,

And quiet as the words of Love

The motions of her spirit are.

And ever following in her train

Come two glad figures fair as she, One with his foot on vanquished pain, And one the foe of tyranny.

Where'er the sons of men are found,
And hearts aspire and deeds are done,
There Courage walks on holy ground
With Joy attained and Freedom won.
The Spectator.
B. Paul Neuman.

THE UNHEEDED.

Upon one hand your kisses chanced to rest:

I smiled upon the other hand and said "Poor thing," when you had gone: and

then in quest

Of pity rose a clamor from the deadSome way of mine, some word, some

look, some jest

Complained they too went all uncoveted

That night I took these troubles to my breast,

And played that you and I, my own, were wed;

Those troubles were our child, with eyes of fear,—

A wailing babe, whom I, his mother dear,

Must soothe to quiet rest and calm relief,

And urge his eyes to sleeping by and by.

"O hush," I said, and wept to see such grief;

"Hush, hush, your father must not hear you cry."

DREAM OF DEATH.

In sleep my idle thoughts were sadly led

By wild dark ways: it strangely seemed that I

Must join the number of the silent dead,

And with my young and fearful heart must die.

But ah, what drew my bitter moans and sighs,

And pierced my sleeping spirit, was that she

Who with the saddest tears would close these eyes

And with maternal passion mourn for me,

She on some pleasure-errand stayed

away.

Ah, bitter, bitter thought! Ah, lonely death

To seek me in the night! And not till day

Had come and soothed my fear, and calmed my breath,

And in the sun my new life I could kiss,

And look with prayer and hope to future years,

Did I discern God's mercy still in thisThat I was spared the anguish of her tears.

Viola Meynell.

THE MOON.

Cirqued with dim stars and delicate moon-flowers,

Silent she moves among the silent hours

Watching the spheres that glow with golden heat

Under her feet.

Then, when the sunrise tints the east with light,

She fades to westward, with the dreamy night

And all her starry train-in faint disguise

Of twilight skies.

Hugh Austin.